When I finished watching today’s episode my first instinct was to crawl back in my bed and fall asleep because as predicted last week there was nothing new in the story. We have been going on around in circles for the past three episodes without making an inch of progress. To summarize episode 6:
– Rafia with her daughters leaves the house and finds a place for them to stay meanwhile *surprise surprise* Kashaf has another confrontation with her father and he storms out once again!
-Zaroon needs someone to stich his button. Hai Beechara!
– Zaroon’s parents, more so his mother, pressurize him to make up his mind about Asmara and the pending engagement
-Zaroon lays out his perspective *cough*chauvinistic and misogynist comments so reflective of our society’s men to Asmara who swallows them like bad tasting medicine and then sticks to batting her eyelashes. The girl clearly has no self-respect.
-the only new things we hear towards the last 10 seconds of episode are that apparently Kashaf has made remarks about Zaroon to Sir Ibrar.
The formula for ZGH:
I have predicted a formula for ZGH episodes for now. Take each one of these scenes and insert them randomly in any order…tada you will have a ZGH fabulous another repetitive episode:
1) Kashaf’s dad or taya come and create hovac
2) Kashaf’s stepmother apna naak charhati hai and Kashaf kaya baa ko pati parhati hain
3) Kashaf complains to God
4) Rafia gives optimism and then we have some nice mother daughter repetitive scenes
5) we hear Zaroon and Kashaf had an argument but god forbid if we ever live to see those arguments
6) Sara and Zaroon have their sibling screen time
7) Asmara and Zaroon argue about everything and oh yeah how we can forget the engagement talk every person in Zaroon’s family needs to do individually with him.
8) – {insert next week’s episode’s promo]
An episode of ZGH is never complete without these scenes or is consistent of these scenes.
Favorite Scene:
Zaroon If you need a button stitched I will come and do it for you, just because you are being played by FK. :D enough said!
The underlying problems with ZGH
Today after watching the episode I have to say that each individual scene is crafted really well in terms of direction, dialogues, cinematography and acting but when you place them together in a sequence, they don’t gel together. There are three reasons (imbalance, repetition and lack of character depth) that I feel that this drama is failing to connect:
The imbalance: As a film student, I understand the pain of the director to dramatize certain aspects of a narrative, especially one that is written in more of a philosophical format and is reflective of a social situation. Usually the showing part in terms of visualizing these narrative is then limited to very dramatic scenes and then to lead the story along, what occurs between scenes can be told by “telling” so the story can make progress. Here it is the director job to control the balance between showing and telling. The underlying problem with Zindagi Gulzar Hai is the imbalance that has become so apparent in the past 6 episodes. Let’s take a clear cut example. The ever going conflict between Kashaf and Zaroon: We had one showing scene between Kashaf and Zaroon in episode four which was only less than a minute long where Kashaf makes a very personal attack during a class argument. We never had any other confrontation. Yet, every time, in past 3 episodes everyone is talking about how Kashaf gives Zaroon a headache or how Zaroon is losing arguments in class e.g. “Us nay har waqt dayd inch ki masjid bana rakhi hai…usay superiority complex hai, inferiority complex nahi “ This blah blah or this “telling” is useless to me as a viewer because I never really saw any dramatic action or “showing” which lead me to believe that there was any confrontation between the two characters. Certainly this imbalance between showing and telling has really flattened otherwise what could have been a very crisp and dramatic narrative. Not only that but Kashaf and Zaroon are our main characters, shouldn’t their story and action sequences be more developed? Today we had zero interaction between them. One might then ask, why is zaroon obsessed with thinking about Kashaf or why Zaroon irittates Kashaf when we never really saw them talking to each other. In the past 6 episodes they had less than 3 scenes together!
Repetition: many scenes and dialogues are written repetitively in a script in different settings so the director could pick the best ones for dramatization that balances the story visually. We have too much repetition in this story e.g. we have heard constant monologues about Kashaf’s reflection on having a hard life, the woes of having an unloving relationship with a parent, 70% of the visualization is dedicated to MadhiaAsmara’s (thank you Roh) constant wailing and Rafia’s woes in life. Repetition is important to enforce a point but it should never slow the story down especially when the dialogues can become very tasteless like the ones where Kashaf is specifically complaining to God again and again. In the past 3 episodes, we are all stuck at the same point which does not fare well for the story, or for the audience.
Under developed characters: Kashaf and Zaroon are well developed and we know their point of view well and where they stand in life. Sadly for them, other than Rafia’s character, everyone else has absolutely no depth or character traits one could feel for e.g. MadihaAsmara. If she is polar opposite to Zaroon, why does she hang around with him, what are her appealing points? All it needed was a simple scene in classroom to show that she is probably witty or bold as well, but we have instead her and Zaroon alone over and over again in the same situation. Also there is extreme contradiction in the story as well. Zaroon’s family is modern, ultra liberal, their son in only 22 and supposedly Sara is younger than him but why are they pushing them for commitment and marriage? A story like ZGH cannot move forward without underdeveloped black and white characters especially those that border on typical archetypes. In my personal opinion, Daam which was also written by Umera Ahmad certainly did a wonderful job of balancing characters and situations.
Next week’s episode promises to be better but we have been fooled before. Before I was watching ZGH for sake of enjoyment and entertainment but since the entertainment part has been squeezed out of the story completely, I will simply stop expecting anything better. There is no doubt about the fact that it’s a well-acted play and much better than a lot of garbage on our screens but it really needs to pick up the speed to compete with much better dramas like CK and ANC. If this drama fails after Ashk for FK, koi us beecharay ki nazar utaar day…
Question for our readers: Last week one of our kind commentators pointed out that we never talked about Zaroon and his misogynist remarks towards Asmara and women in general. I felt very strongly about Zaroon’s words not in a bad way, but not in a good way either. Today Umera scored great points with me because she nailed down Zaroon to us completely. I see where Zaroon is coming from but before I put my input in there, I wanted to hear a few of your remarks on some of the points raised
1) Should anyone have the right, especially a non-family member to tell a women what to wear and how to dress?
2) Is it alright for guys to go to inappropriate places but girls should refrain, because people will always point and raise finger on her character?
3) Why is there such a double standard in our society, is there is a real reason behind it or is it a cultural preserved meme?
Which team are you guys on this week?
[polldaddy poll=6731441]
Written by Misty aka Basanti~
